Some critics are like chimneysweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from the nests above; they scrape a ...long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing out from the top of the house, as if they had built it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

When Mabelle Webb died, Clifton began the mourning that lasted until his own death. Noel Coward noted in a letter, . . . "Poor Cli...fton . . . is still, after two months, wailing and sobbing over Mabelle's death. As she was well over ninety, gaga, and driving him mad for years, this seems excessive and over indulgent. . . ." The most famous remark to go the rounds of Clifton Webb's friends was Noel Coward's final, acerbic one to him: "It must be tough to be orphaned at seventy-one!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible th...at a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting o...ut at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their d...escent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralyti...c polio or by living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you're crazy. It can fix you so you can't play nothing or sing nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hi...t 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »